Get Britain Working is totally missing the current employment crisis economy

@Chiseltip So you think 96% of working people have a degree? That’s clearly ridiculous.

The other long term issue with AI which isn’t being addressed is what happens when those experienced staff move on, retire etc. if there’s no entry level staff moving up the ladder. There’s going to be a massive skills gap needing to be filled and no people with the experience to do it because well you know AI!

That is just not true.

I totally get what you're saying. And the government keeps banging on about 'getting disabled people into work'. I think they are totally oblivious to the fact that if a person who has no disabilities, an unbroken track record of employment and is highly qualified,struggles to find work,how the hell is a disabled person going to manage? With my disability and health problems,I know I wouldn't last a month in a job. That's if I even managed to find one in the first place! I'm 62, haven't worked for many years due to increasingly poor health,so what employer in their right mind is going to take a chance on me against a fit,able bodied and probably much younger person? Some days I feel so awful I struggle to get out of bed,never mind having to travel and put in a day's work. Not looking for pity just saying it like it is. This government thinks that ALL disabled people are desperate to find work. If they feel able to,that's fine. But if like me,you feel it would be the last straw,it's unfair to make us feel like worthless scroungers and layabouts. And I don't believe for one second all this waffle about 'You'd get all the support you need'. Utter bullshit. All they're interested in is reducing the number of people who are economically inactive. Once you've found a job,that's it,you're on your own.

Actually we have fairly recently started working with two local universities and we have recruited a number of staff this way - one of the universities is particularly helpful in filtering the candidates before we see them, and this definitely helps with some of the concerns around quality. We are hoping that we can get the other uni to adopt a similar model, but I appreciate that they also have limited capacity and resource.

Do companies ever approach universities to team up? Maybe offering in house experience would have a flow of new recruits?

I think this is a fair point, and I don't blame people for being cautious.

Actually, we have a very good reputation, as reflected in the very positive reviews on glass door, exit interview data and retention rates amongst the staff that we have. There is no shortage of people wanting to work with us, just a shortage of high quality applications.

Your business probably has a reputation issue then?

When you know the new employer can get rid of you for no reason at all at any time for the first TWO YEARS, it takes a huge leap of faith to sign yourself into a new tenancy agreement/mortgage that hasn’t the same flexibility.

Different types of stress
I have done retail, call centre and emergency services before someone tells me I don’t know what I’m talking about
retail is stressful with abusive customers the same as emergency services. Yes you don’t have the worry of killing someone or ending up in court but I can’t say it’s not stressful

@Chiseltip Having an educated society isn't a bad thing as long as they have skills they can use. AI is taking most non-physical jobs slowly but surely, so most of us will have to rely on the government coming up with something. They seem to prefer playing Ostriches though as there is a radio silence on this.

IME it is because AI has meant businesses have been replacing workers. Watch Dispatches, it's a growing amount. AI jobs don't pay taxes.

Not strictly true. Our next door neighbour when I was a child made the repeated mistake of leaving roll cages full of booze on the loading dock to be collected by her brother and ended up in prison.

Oh come on!

Working in your local Top Shop isn't stressful. Try being a Paramedic or a Police Officer, then you'll understand stress.

Stacking shelves in Tesco, while a necessary job, isn't going to get you sent to prison if you make a mistake or bad judgment call.

48% of people having a degree is half in my opinion. You can be pedantic if you like, but the outcome is the same.

There aren’t enough positions for all those degree holders. If there were, none of them would be unemployed or struggling to find work.

@Chiseltip I think you will find 37% of school leavers go to university so your post is based on total misinformation and is obviously misleading. Around 48% of the workforce has a degree. That leaves the majority without one. It’s up to young people to decide if some degrees are worth it. I don’t feel they are but it’s not true to say the best degrees from the best universities don’t lead to higher pay, becayse they do. Young people should be much more discerning.

All job opportunities are falling but the chancellor has over taxed employment. Doctors work part time to avoid paying tax and not earning over £100,000. There’s no ambition from them to reduce waiting lists. Others limit work to keep benefits. Others simply don’t want to work at all. If tax goes up, working people will feel very short changed by Labour.

Try working in retail in the run up to Christmas and into January and then say it isnt stressful. You can always tell how privileged someone is when they come out with this kind of shite,

We've halved the number of graduate positions we are offering and have scrapped all remaining clerical positions (even receptionists) and many backoffice sales and admin positions, and those that have not been scrapped are now all offshored. This is on the back of 14% YoY revenue growth.

The reason: massive adoption of AI to do these jobs. The AI assistants and tools are shit, obviously, and just create more work for the people who are forced to use them - a simple HR or finance query, that could have been solved in minutes in a call, now takes over a week of bouncing tickets back and forth, first to a clueless AI, then to some poor sod in Bangalore, then, if you are lucky, someone who actually know what they are talking about.

But they save a shit ton of money over actually employing people which is good news for the shareholders, which at the end of the day is all that matters.

To add I am not doing too badly
4 face to face interviews this week and I’ve got a telephone one as well but I’m looking at jobs around 28k

I was made redundant in summer, left end of august
started new job beginning of sept to be told last week they’re overstaffed and letting me go

Fix the NHS. There's quite a lot of people waiting to go back to work but unable. The country is broken, it really is. Government soundbites or bullying those sick back to work by losing benefits before helping them is tyrannical.

As a country, we have little to offer.

Unfortunately school hour jobs are extremely rare. Posts are unlikely to come up as they are so coveted. However your wife could check an agency which recruits within your area for support staff.
Infact part time work is difficult to find at the moment. The jobs I’ve been applying to have not got part time hours to offer.

They are. The number of universal credit claimants who aren't required to work has risen by a million in the past year. 4 million people (50% of claimants) are now in this category. Labour completely bottled any kind of welfare reform and now seem ready to shovel more cash their way by lifting the 2 child benefit cap.

Leave the country or claim benefits are the most sensible options.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to predict that there would never be millions of middle management jobs for all those "I won't lower myself to do manual work" Uni Grads.

The IL doesn't really .ake anything anymore. And computing/A.I has made most mid level corporate roles redundant. And if the mid level roles aren't needed, then neither are the entry level ones.

We educated ourselves into unemployment.

Now, even the side hustles have been taxed and regulated to death.

The government is killing the economy and closing business at record levels. It's bizarre to me how nobody can think more then one step ahead anymore.

The Renters Rights Bill for example will do nothing for tenants except make rentals harder to find and much more expensive. Get rid of small landlords, we don't want people owning houses and renting them out! But at the same time, the government (and renters themselves) have no problem with Lloyd's Bank buying up 50,000 houses to rent out.

You couldn't make it up.

This is the same level of thinking that got the country into the current mess. And these people are in charge, it's no wonder the country is fucked.

Just the abject stupidity of believing that everyone should have a degree. Great, so the taxi driver has a degree, and the passenger, going to that "high level" corporate meeting, also has a degree?

So what's the value of an education in that case. Because if everyone has a degree, someone still has to drive the taxi, work in the food factory, collect the waste, fill the potholes. Everyone seems to want a career, but nobody wants to do a job.